An Easy-to-follow tutorial on painting very simple fur. for this tutorial, my fur is going to be white. I've pre-drawn up a drawing to use for this tutorial, but it works for anything. This tutorial also works for long fur and short fur, as well as hair.

How to Paint Fur in Photoshop

STEP 1.

Depending on the colour you want your fur to be, choose a dark base colour and paint it where your fur will be. Make sure it's a darker version of the colour you want it to be, since we will mainly be using the dodge tool to lighten the colour. If your base colour is light, your fur wont have much depth and will be too bright so it won't be as realistic. If your fur has stripes or spots, you will need two base colours, just paint the second base colour where the stripes or spots will be.

STEP 2.

Using the dodge tool, which is found with the burn and sponge tool, set the range to shadows, and the exposure to 100. Use a fairly small but not too small hard round brush set to pressure(assuming you use a pressure sensitive tablet)set to 50 opacity, and make quick strokes in the direction your fur is growing or flowing. The length of the strokes depends on how long you want the fur or hair to be. make sure you overlap the strokes a bit but not too much in one spot. space it out nicely.

STEP 3.

Now make your dodge brush a bit smaller. Keep the exposure on 100, but change the range to midtones. do the exact same thing as the last step, but don't do as many strokes and make your strokes shorter. Keep your strokes more to the parts that will be more highlighted.

STEP 4.

Now make your dodge brush even smaller. Keep exposure 100, but change the range to highlight and repeat step 3 but only make your strokes where the lightest parts will be.

STEP 5.

The final step! switch to the burn tool, but use the same brush you used with the dodge tool. make the brush size about the same as in step 3. make exposure 100 and range set to shadow. now using the same type of strokes, darken just the places that will be darkest. In my picture it's where the fur curves into the edge of the eye. I hope this tutorial was helpful and you enjoyed it! Feel free to make requests, and I'll see you in my next tutorial! :D

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